West or Bust- to Chicago, Saturday, June 24, 2017

      "Go West," wrote Horace Greeley and for this summer's trip we plan to do exactly that.  We first thought about doing this trip a few years ago, but we had other trips to take first.  Now, we are driving west to the Pacific, adding many states to our life-lists, and hopefully visiting many iconic spots along the way like Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone.  When we get to Seattle, our hope is that Julie's folks will have flown in.  Then they will take our car and we will fly back.

     Anna finished up her junior year Regents' exams last week, and Emma's 8th grade finals and Regents were done by Tuesday.  Scott's grades were due on Wednesday and his last day was Thursday.   By far, the busiest week belonged to Julie.  Because she is one the Senior Class advisers, she not only had the regular end of the year stuff that teachers do, but she also had to plan for the Class of 2017's graduation ceremony on Friday night, and didn't make it home until after 11:00 PM.  Ever the optimist, she wanted to get a really early start on Saturday morning.  In actuality, we were on the road shortly after 7:00 AM, so that probably still qualifies as an early start, but it was later than what she was hoping for.

     Our first stop was the West Side Market in Cleveland.  Julie had been wanting to go there for a while.  We were very close to it when we visited the Great Lakes Brewery's pub back on our weekend in Cleveland earlier this spring, but we hadn't yet found the time to visit it.  We got to the market a little after 10:00 AM and even though it was starting to get crowded, we were still able to view the wares for sale there.  They had neatly organized little stalls for each of the vendors in a grand old building that resembles an old train station with an wide arched ceiling and a clock tower.  The fruits, vegetables and meats were tempting.  In fact, Julie now wants to come back to Cleveland again and plans to have a cooler in the car to load up with bratwursts, fancy spiced hamburgers and other goodies.  For now, the plan was to get enough for lunch today.  We ended up getting a loaf of "rustic Italian" bread, which they sliced for us, some "honey" ham, and some Swiss cheese, along with some blackberries and assorted fruit.  We ended up eating them at a picnic table rest stop further down the Ohio Turnpike.  The weather was ideal for a picnic, with bright blue skies and just a light breeze.

     We passed into Indiana, which was a new state for Anna and Emma's list.  They both slept through most of it though, but they didn't miss much.  There wasn't a welcome center, and all of the way through the state we had the feeling that Indiana didn't really want us there.  Nearly all of the rest areas along the toll section of the I-90 were closed.  We were often driving a one-lane road because one lane was closed for construction for much of the distance.  We only half-jokingly said that we only wanted to pay half the toll because we only got half a road.  The complaint wouldn't have worked if we had said it out loud because there wasn't even a toll collector at the booth- just a machine that you had to feed dollar bills into, one-by-one, and hope that they didn't get spit back out again.   We remembered how Dean used to call Indiana the "Armpit of America," and we hadn't seen anything to redeem it from that reputation.  We did get to spend an extra "4:00 PM" there since we crossed the time zone line into the Central Time Zone and turned the clocks back.

     Eventually we saw the "Welcome to Chicago" sign, though, interestingly, there was no "Welcome to Illinois" sign.  Illinois isn't really a new state for the girls though, because they have flown in and out of O'Hare airport before.  We entered the South Side of Chicago, famed as both the home of "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown," and the Chicago White Sox.   We passed the stadium where the White Sox play.  It's not officially Comiskey Park anymore but has some corporate sponsored name that probably changes regularly.  Any way, it was just as we were passing the ball field that we started to get into heavy, slow moving traffic.  Even though it was a Saturday, it was about 5:00, and it took us a while to get through there and out of Chicago again.  We did get a number of chances to get some nice views of the skyscrapers and the skyline, though.

     We found our hotel in Lombard, Illinois, west of Chicago.  We had our first big possible glitch of the trip when the hotel said that they didn't have any reservations in our names.  We did some searching through the emails on Julie's phone and eventually discovered that the error was ours.  When we made the reservations on Expedia, we had accidentally made them for MAY 24 - 29, not June 24 - 29.  Because of what the hotel had available, we're going to have to spend tonight in a room with a single king bed.  The girls will be able to have a pull-out bed from the couch.  It's a pretty small room for four people.  Tomorrow, we should be able to move to a room with two double beds instead.  That isn't so bad,  but we're paying a significant amount more per night because we didn't get the deal that we had originally thought we were making.  That's not something we can blame on the hotel, though.

     We still needed to find a place for dinner, and it was around 7:00 here (and 8:00 on our internal clocks).  We drove around a nearby mall, and found some very nice looking places to eat.  Scott was excited to find a "Harry Caray's" in a nearby hotel and talked everyone into eating there.  He had to explain to the girls who Harry Caray was and why it was funny that there is a big cow filled with Swiss cheese-like holes and wearing big black horn-rimmed glasses.  (It's a "Holey cow!")   There were lots of pictures and memorabilia inside, and ball games on all of the many TVs.  Scott and Julie each got a Holy Cow burger and Scott had a beer called "Let's Play Ball" which is brewed for the restaurant.  The place was a little expensive, but Scott enjoyed the food there. We were all pretty tired then, and made our way back to squeeze ourselves into the hotel room.